Syracuse residents who spoke at a Tuesday public hearing on the city’s housing strategy said they broadly support the plan to invest in middle income neighborhoods in hopes to stabilize them and spur private investment.
However, some say the plan lacks a detailed roadmap that addresses concerns in longtime derelict neighborhoods and that the city needs to codify tenant protections against eviction and gentrification. The pushback largely came from the Syracuse Tenants Union and others who spoke about the city’s tenants.
“The housing crisis that’s going on is impacting tenants’ lives right now, and they can’t afford to wait 10 years, 15 years, or more in most cases for the city for revitalization to happen,” said Jocelyn Richards, a member of the tenants union. Richards, however, does support the plan.
The council will likely vote on the strategy at their Aug. 12 meeting, said Councilman Pat Hogan who represents the council’s second district, which includes Tipperary Hill. The first phase of the plan would task the Syracuse Housing Trust Fund Corporation with giving grants and low-interest loans for beautification projects in the Salt Springs and Tipperary Hill Neighborhoods. It would start in 2025 and cost $25 million.
The city hopes that the influx of funding into middle income neighborhoods will incentivize owners to keep up with the conditions of their properties in the long run, and in turn potentially up the property values in their respective blocks.
The city has already secured $7.5 million to get the first phase underway and city officials have said the work could take 10 years. Additional phases, which could include distressed neighborhoods, could take 15 years to see improvement.
Some proponents of the housing strategy say they see the plan as a new way to invest in neighborhoods that are typically excluded from substantial sources of state and federal funding, such as some tax credit subsidies that cover the costs of development on low-income housing.
“Over decades, the way we’ve done business in Syracuse … hasn’t succeeded. Too many people are rent burdened. Too many neighborhoods have experienced disinvestment.” Alex Marion, the Syracuse city auditor said, “And it’s time, we do something different. The housing strategy begins that work. It is a down payment on the future.”
But some others say that, while the plan makes investments to up the quality of housing in parts of the city, the concerns of some of Syracuse’s most vulnerable tenants living in distressed neighborhoods are still going unaddressed.
In the plan, consultants recommend addressing the gap in quality housing in distressed neighborhoods by intensifying property code enforcement and lead paint abatement efforts. The plan also calls for the acquisition, or in some cases of demolition, of problematic or vulnerable properties, and providing a pathway toward rehabilitation of the land. The work in those distressed neighborhoods would take around 15 years to be completed, city officials say.
“The strategy does not give a clear policy plan to achieve these objectives,” said Richards.
Richards advocated for the city to implement the housing strategy and simultaneously implement the tenants union’s own three-part platform. That includes opting into “good cause” eviction protections, bolstering enforcement of rental registry requirements and completing a property vacancy study in order to eventually opt into the Emergency Tenant Protection Act.
ETPA would in part stabilize rents in Syracuse.
After the meeting, Hogan said members of the council have not met to discuss ‘good cause.’
“It is going to be a big disincentive to get people to invest in the city,” Hogan said of “good cause.”
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